


EtN - The Fugative AU: My Name is Cyrille

by SummerInAmsterdam



Series: AU and RP Inspired Stuff [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Diary/Journal, Emotional Hurt, Family, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lots a family related stuff in this story, Nature Magic, On the Run, Origin Story, Original Character(s), Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, Twins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerInAmsterdam/pseuds/SummerInAmsterdam
Summary: "My name is Cyrille. I’m twenty-one years old. I’m a version of a girl from the real world. And this is how my life got turned upside down."
Relationships: Cyrille (Fandom RPF) & Cheney, Cyrille's family
Series: AU and RP Inspired Stuff [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018860
Comments: 29
Kudos: 4





	1. I can't sleep, so I'm just gonna spill my brain out onto this paper until I don't feel like writing anymore.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ETNMystic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ETNMystic/gifts).



Okay. I’ve just been lying awake in bed for hours, and I can’t go to sleep. I don't know if it’s just regular old nerves, or a defense mechanism from the fact that we're constantly being hunted down by something, or that I may or may not have drank too much coffee before bed again ~~(don't ask how i got it that's not important).~~ The point is, I can’t sleep, and my sketchbook was _right here._ It normally helps me calm down. I don't really feel like drawing right now, though, so maybe I'll just write instead.

I have to get this all down while Mystic, Delta and the others are still asleep. Maybe if I’m fast enough, they won’t see me or ask questions. I'm not really sure if it matters that much anymore. I mean, it's not like they don't know what happened to me already, but I don't want them to worry again. I’ll have to remember to thank Lauren for helping me make these sketchbooks. We’ve been constantly moving and being captured and changing homes for so long, and basically in comas for even longer. I’m honestly surprised I can still find time to draw and write in these things. I don’t know how I’ll be able to get this out there, but I’ll figure out a way somehow. Maybe Merlin can help me with this or something. He _is_ a wizard, after all.

But I think I’m doing that thing where my mind goes all over the place and my thoughts get jumbled. Sorry about that.

But now that I have your attention, I think I’ll just get the whole shock-factor out of the way right now.

So here’s the deal. I know I’m not a real person.

I mean, I’m a _person._ I have thoughts, feelings, dreams, things like that. But I’m not actually _real._ I’m just a part of some college girl’s imagination that was stimulated by one of her online friends. I think we both see it as a sort of “parallel universe” deal.

But here’s the thing - we’re both a lot alike. We have a lot of the same interests and hobbies. We both love art and writing. We both love iced coffee and apple juice _way_ too much. We both like the same general types of music. We’d both be in the Apollo Cabin if we were half-bloods in the _Percy Jackson_ series. We’ve even both had the same changing hairstyles - from shoulder-length, to a bob, and now a pixie cut - at the same ages. That must have been a weird time for her (I mean, hopefully not as much as it was for me, but still).

I even share memories with this girl, but only to an extent. Not quite to the point where I genuinely feel like those things have happened to me - just enough to know what they were like for her.

We both got into the same shows and stories around the same time, and a lot of them involved adventures and fantasy. _Adventure Time, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter,_ the works. We also really like mysteries, and pretty much grew up on _Scooby-Doo._ More recently, we’ve both been into _Escape the Night,_ despite putting it off for the first couple of seasons. It had all the elements of a good story that we both really loved - action, mystery, adventure and fantasy - not to mention some of our favorite YouTubers.

We have differences too, but some of them are more or less noticeable than others. We’re both kind of on the shy side, but I’m more vocal about what I think. We’re both Hufflepuffs, but my temper is a lot shorter than hers. ~~That part’s honestly been scaring me lately.~~ She was a major swimmer as a kid, and I was a major climber. I'm a vegetarian, and she’s not. She grew up with a sister, and I grew up with a brother.

But I should probably stop before my thoughts get too jumbled up again. I just want to get something down and keep it in one place. That’s what sketchbooks and journals are for, right? The problem is so much has happened to us by now, that I don’t know what to write about. I guess I could do what Delta is doing and write about what happened when the other authors started disappearing, but it started before the real me became too involved in this whole thing. I remember _some_ things that happened, but it’s still a little fuzzy...

I kinda wanna make this easy on myself, so I’ll just write what I remember the most. I’ll tell you about what happened to me long before I met Mystic and the rest of my friends. Before _Escape the Night,_ or the Society, or the… _You-Know-What_ God came into the picture.

My name is Cyrille. I’m twenty-one years old. I’m a version of a girl from the real world. And this is how my life got turned upside down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw that a few of my fellow authors from ETNMystyc's OET and Fugitive AUs were writing some stories around them, so I decided to join the fun! I'm having a lot of fun with Cyrille so far, and with the Fugitive AU as a whole! I hope you guys like her story!!


	2. The Beginning of the End. (Is that dramatic enough? Do the titles need to be, like, foreshadowing or whatever?)

I was about eleven when my family had our last move. Our new house wasn’t much. Just a regular old single-story brick house with a black roof. The backyard led to some woods with a path leading into it. My mom would spend a lot of her time there for her work over the next couple years.

We moved around a lot thanks to my mom’s job. She was a biologist who specialized in botany. She might as well have been our personal science teacher, too. She told us every possible fact about flowers, trees, plants of all sorts. Her favorite thing to talk about always seemed to be trees.

As for our dad, he worked in graphic design. I always thought his drawings were awesome. Ever since I was little, I’d sit at a little stool next to his drawing desk and watch him work. It was a little harder for him to find work where we used to live, but now that we lived in California, he figured he’d have more opportunities.

“So?” Mom asked excitedly when we first pulled into the driveway. “What do you think?”

“It’s a house,” I told her. It looked pretty average to me.

“It’s our _last house._ ” I could hear the grin in Mom's voice.

“Isn’t that what you guys said at our _other_ last house?” Cheney asked.

Dad turned around in his seat. “This is the last move, guys. Once Mom and I get started with our new jobs, we’ll all get settled. And you’ll both be starting middle school here in two weeks.”

Cheney perked up instantly. “Middle school?”

My brother, Cheney, was the bookworm out of the two of us. He was in this advanced program at our last school. He was always surrounded by other kids who knew stuff above our grade level, and I figured he’d probably be in a program like that in our school, if it had one.

For some reason, I'd always figured it wasn't too different than me and the school's special education program. I have Asperger’s syndrome, which is another thing I have in common with my real counterpart. I’d be pulled out of class for a half hour to spend time with other kids like me in a classroom where this lady would teach us about social cues and norms. Some of us are able to adapt those norms systematically, but others still have trouble comprehending some things without a little help.

I sunk in my seat. “I miss my old friends, though…”

Dad got out and opened the door for me. “You’ll make new friends here, sweetie. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

“I guess…”

I slowly got out and joined the rest of my family. Moving wasn’t new for me. A lot of my earliest memories came from all over the place. Jumping into a pile of leaves in Virginia. Playing tag with the neighborhood kids in Texas. And more recently, finishing Elementary school in Indiana. I wasn’t too sure how to get used to staying in one place.

My real self stayed in the same city her entire childhood. I guess that sounds boring in theory, but I wish I knew what that was like. I’d never have to say goodbye to my friends, or keep my stuff packed up somewhere in case we moved again.

Cheney walked up to me and nudged my arm. “Hey, you saw all those woods in the backyard, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Whadaya bet we’ll find Bigfoot in those woods?”

I instantly lit up at the sound of that. “You really think Bigfoot’s in there?”

“Maybe!”

A word about my brother, Cheney - he was about ten minutes older than me, and he was my favorite person in the entire world. Yeah, we had the occasional sibling feud, but we were really close growing up. Think Dipper and Mabel - or Rosanna and MatPat - only my hair was always shorter, and Cheney never wore a hat. We constantly had each other’s backs, and we were super protective of each other.

When we went to school in Indiana, these stupid boys wouldn’t stop teasing me. A bunch of kids thought I was weird because I didn’t understand social cues, or had trouble communicating things. They were giving me hell at recess by making a bunch of loud noises, which really freaked me out. Cheney saw them messing with me, and started throwing a bunch of crumpled paper balls and pencils at them. The teacher saw all of this, and gave the boys lunch detention for three days. Cheney only got one day, and I was still mad that he got in trouble too, but he told me not to worry about it.

I got to return the favor eventually. There were these girls who made fun of Cheney for being in the advanced program. They harassed him at recess while he was reading a book - called him a nerd, geek, all that stuff. Mind you, this was before nerd culture was cool. I saw them trying to take the book out of his hands, and that was what set me off. I started screaming at them and chased them around the playground with a really big stick. I didn’t actually hit them, but I still had to spend the next couple of recesses in the classroom. It was worth it, though. The girls were my detention mates, and never messed with my brother again.

The funny thing was that it wouldn’t strike right away that we were twins. I mean, we weren’t identical, obviously. He had my dad’s brown hair and my mom’s green eyes. I had my mom’s blonde hair and my dad’s blue eyes. But he was still my brother. And I was still his sister. Nothing was ever going to change that.

Mom was already taking some stuff in from the car. “Well, let’s get unpacked first. You two can explore the woods tomorrow.”

It was already pretty late in the day. We’d spent the past few days driving to our new home, and we only got there around dinnertime. But I didn’t wanna wait that long.

“But _mooooooom!_ ” we whined.

“No ‘buts’ you two.” Mom insisted. “I don’t want you wandering around those woods after sunset.”

There were a lot more _“but moooooooooms”_ after that, but we ended up not going into the woods that night. Dad agreed with Mom, but I think it was just because he kinda felt like he had to in order to be a “protective parent.” But that was more mom’s role. Try as he might, Dad had assumed the role as “the cool parent” the moment Cheney and I popped into the world.

I guess that’s what happens when a Griffyndor and a Slytherin get married and have a kids together. And those two kids turn out to be a Ravenclaw and a Hufflepuff.

Cheney and I listened to them and stayed in for the night, but that didn’t stop us from spending the entire next afternoon in the woods. I think that was my favorite part about living there. The woods were maybe about a mile deep, and it led into a park with a playground.

Cheney and I spent a whole lot of time exploring those woods. We never found Bigfoot, but we did find some other cool stuff. We found a little wooden shack that must not have been used in years. The wooden planks were all out of place, and it was overgrown with vines and ivy. We found a family of rabbits living in a hollowed out tree. We also found a snakeskin, but the snake was gone. ~~Thank God.~~

We found a fairy ring made out of these pretty red and orange toadstools. I remember warning Cheney to be careful not to step on them because I didn’t want to make the fairies mad after they’d worked so hard on it.

“Fairies aren’t real,” Cheney told me.

“They are too!” I argued. “Where do you think the name comes from? And why else would the ring look like that?”

I was a pretty naive kid. I had enough imagination to fuel an entire cardboard box from that one _Spongebob_ episode. I believed dragons were hunted to extinction by knights in medieval times. I thought house brownies were the ones leaving little crumbs on the kitchen counter late at night (even though it turned out to be my dad). I believed pixies were the ones who left dewdrops on the grass every morning. I believed in _everything,_ and fairies were definitely one of my favorite creatures.

~~I have a sort of complicated relationship with fairies now.~~

I was even dumb enough to believe that the world would stay as amazing as I thought it was forever.


	3. The Day I Found Out Cheney Was Different

By the time I was twelve, I was really starting to feel like I finally had a home. My dad was able to find a job in advertising thanks to his artwork, and my mom was spending almost every minute of everyday studying and writing about plants. As for me and Cheney, we got by with school. Obviously middle school is gonna suck in its own way, but we survived. And anyway, we still had the woods.

Cheney and I spent so much time running through the trees and exploring the place, that we knew it like the back of our hands. It became our place. Even Mom and Dad liked it there. When she wasn’t studying the plants in the area, she’d take Dad out for walks through there sometimes. I’m gonna be honest, they might have had their moments, but they remain my couple goals to this day.

You too Alice and Envy don’t worry lol

I remember feeling more at peace among the trees than anywhere else in the whole world. Whenever I needed to get away from the hassle of… whatever could be considered a hassle in middle school, I’d come home and run off into the woods. I’d find a tree, sit under it, climb it, whatever. I’d just stare up at the sky, the sun peaking through the leaves, and listen to the birds and the breeze rustling the trees. For some reason, I always seemed to be drawn to oak trees. I gave other trees their share of attention too, but I was always hanging around the oaks.

I thought everything would be perfect, up until the… conversation I heard from my parents.

It was late at night, and I was thirsty. So, naturally, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to get some water. I heard my parents’ voices from the hall. I had no idea what was going on, but whatever they were talking about, they didn’t sound happy.

The hallway led into the den, which had an open walkway to the kitchen. Dad was pacing around, while Mom was sitting at the table. I hid against the wall next to the kitchen walkway and listened.

Dad was just finishing up saying something. “... can’t keep going on like this.”

“We don’t need to worry about this anymore, Richard.” Mom’s voice was stern. “We told them this would be the last move, and we _meant_ it. We’re safe here.”

“But we need to think about what’s best for the kids. If one of them starts showing signs that-”

“They’re _children_. Even if they _do_ have them, they won’t show signs of anything for a long time.”

 _Signs?_ I thought.

That made me come out o my hiding spot. “Signs of what?” I asked them.

They both whirled in my direction. I must have startled them.

“Cyrille!” Dad exclaimed. Then he calmed down after he saw my face. “Are you okay?”

I answered his question with a question. “Are Cheney and I sick or something?”

Mom shook her head vigorously. “No! No, of course you’re not, baby.”

“Then what are we gonna start showing signs of?”

Mom and Dad both looked at each other with these weird, worried looks. I started wondering if my brother and I really _were_ sick. Maybe it was some sort of rare disease, and if we started showing symptoms of it, something would happen to us.

“Nothing, honey,” Dad assured me.

It wasn’t enough for me. “But you guys said-”

Mom got up and walked over to me. “Don’t worry about it, Cyrille.” She got to my level and put a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll understand when you’re a little older, okay?”

You know what I hated when I was younger? When my parents told me things like, “You’re too young to understand,” or “You’ll understand when you’re older.” It always made me feel smaller than I was. Like people thought I was too stupid to understand anything.

“But I’m almost thirteen!” I insisted. “I’ll understand! Tell me!”

Mom’s face fell a bit. “Later, honey. You’re just too young to know about it right now. Please try not to worry about it, alright?”

The more she told me not to worry, the more frustrated I got. I wasn't worried anymore. I was mad that they were keeping secrets from me. Mom didn’t look too happy with how the conversation went. It was almost like she wanted to say more - like she and Dad actually _did_ want to tell me something. Looking back on it, I almost wish I’d stayed ignorant. But I wouldn’t be writing this if that happened, would I?

I left the kitchen without another word. Not even a “goodnight.” I started making my way to the hall that led to the bedrooms, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I crept over to the window and saw Cheney in the backyard, holding a flashlight. He was _way_ closer to the woods than Mom would’ve liked at that time of night. He must have seen me too, because he gestured for me to come outside. 

I gave him a look that said, _Dude, no! Mom said!_

He responded with a look of, _Come on! Mom doesn’t need to know!_

Me: _But what if someone sees us?_ _  
_

Cheney: _They_ _won’t! Let’s go!_

It took a few more looks, but he convinced me. I snuck out of the house and into the night. I still remember that night clearly, almost every detail. The moon was almost full enough to the point where we barely needed a flashlight. Crickets and cicadas were chirping somewhere in the distance. Dew was already forming in the grass, and fireflies were fluttering around, lighting the yard a bit.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Mom's not gonna like it when she finds-”

“Just follow me!” Cheney motioned to the woods with his flashlight.

“What? Why?”

“Just come on! I wanna show you something cool!”

Hahah, funny, normally you would do the exact opposite if someone told you that, wouldn’t ya?

Well, I was always down for seeing cool stuff, so he had me hooked. I followed him down the path a bit and into the woods as he shone the flashlight ahead of us. I stuck close to Cheney as we walked. I was so used to being in the woods during the day, when I could see everything. Now that we were actually out in the woods after sunset, they seemed more eerie. Every sound was amplified, and every shadow looked like a monster.

There are times when I really hate my imagination.

Finally, we stopped at a hollow log. He set the flashlight on the log so that it faced us.

“Okay, what am I looking at?” I asked.

Cheney looked at me and smiled. “Check this out…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little wooden block.

I didn’t get it at first. “You still play with blocks?” I teased him.

“It’s a block _now,_ ” Cheney said. He sounded really excited, like he was about to perform some sort of amazing feat. “But when I found it, it was just a piece of tree bark!”

“Yeah. That’s where _all_ wooden toys come from.”

“I _made_ it into a block!” he beamed.

Part of me wanted to say something like, “I’m going inside now,” and leave. But something about the look on his face told me this wasn’t a joke.

“What do you mean you _‘made’_ it into a block?” I pried. “If this is some kind of prank-”

Before I could say anything else, he closed his hand over the block. He took a breath, held it, clenched his hands, and opened them. The block was replaced with a perfect little sphere.

I was shocked. “What the-?! How did you do that?” I looked around at the sphere from every angle, trying to figure out how he did that. “Is this some kind of magicy thing?!”

The grin didn’t fall from Cheney’s face. “I don’t know! I was just messing around and I turned it into a block!”

“Can you do more?”

“Yeah - watch this!”

I stared in awe as he turned the sphere into a pyramid, then a star. He could bend and morph the wood to make it look like water, turning it into different shapes.

“That’s so _cool!_ ” I exclaimed. “When did you find out you could do that?!”  
“Just today! Awesome, right?!”

“Uh, _yeah!_ It’s like something out of _Avatar: The Last Airbender!_ ”

I watched some more as he kept morphing the wood into a bunch of different shapes. I’d never seen anything like that before. It was like I was lifted out of the real world and thrown into one of my fantasy books.

“Should we show Mom and Dad this?” I asked excitedly.

Cheney stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “I don’t know…” He sounded hesitant. “I mean, Mom studies plants for a living. What if we show her and she gets scared? What if _other_ people get scared of me?”

I thought about that. If I knew then what I know now, I would have taken that more seriously. Despite that, I saw where he was coming from. I knew what it was like to have people think you’re weird. I mean, how would you react if one of your friends ran up to you and said, “Hey, guess what?! I can turn a piece of bark into a cat! Isn’t that cool?!”

We were a lot younger back then. I just thought this was a tiny secret thing he discovered. But even if I knew what it would lead to, I still wouldn’t tell anyone. Cheney was my best friend, even back then. 

I nodded. “Okay. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Cheney held out his pinky, and I gripped it with mine. My brother and I always used pinky swears as an ultimate form of trust. If you ever make a pinky swear to someone, don’t _ever_ break it. Those things are forever.

“Mom and Dad keep things from us because we’re kids anyway,” I told him. “This will be something we’ll keep secret from _them._ ”

“Yeah!”

Now that I'm writing about it, something else actually comes to mind about that night. When we got back to the backyard, I noticed something stupid, but I thought it was so important back then.

“Hey, Cheney,” I said, “I think I’m taller than you.”

“Huh?” he asked. “No, you’re not.”

“Yeah, I think I am.”

“Prove it!”

“Okay.”

We both stood back to back, and I raised my hand up to the top of our heads. I could feel the top of his hairs sticking up, but I could easily feel my head.

“Ha!” I exclaimed triumphantly. “See? I _am_ taller than you!”

Cheney crossed his arms. “Just wait ‘till the growth spurts come in! Then _I’ll_ be taller.”

“Yeah, but mine will happen first,” I teased.

“Will _not!_ ”

“Will _too!_ ”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

With that, I leaped onto Cheney and tackled him to the ground. Don’t worry, it wasn’t, like, serious fighting. My brother and I wrestled like that a lot when we were kids. I guess anyone who grew up with brothers may or may not understand.

We spent a good five minutes or so rolling round in the grass until our parents must have heard the commotion. We didn’t see them standing in the doorway leading to the patio until one of them called out to us.

“What’s going on out here?” Mom called to us.

That was when I realized we were both covered in dirt and grass stains. It was just like when we were little. I know this might sound stupid, but I think it was the stupid stuff about my old life that I miss the most.

“Just playing, Mom!” Cheney assured her.

Don’t worry, Mom! We definitely weren’t messing around with nature magic! No siree Bob!

“Well come inside,” Dad told us. “It’s getting late.”

Cheney and I both got up, and I dusted the dirt and grass off my shirt. I went to bed that night, satisfied that Cheney and I had our own secret to keep from our parents.

At least, I _thought_ it would be a secret...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is great forever don't worry about it!!!!!


	4. The night we had to go

And it stayed our secret for a while.

Every so often, Cheney would pull me into the woods and show me what he learned how to do. Morphing wood was apparently just the tip of the iceberg. By the time we were thirteen, he could grow flowers and change their color. He could enter through one tree and come out from another. He could even hear what the trees were thinking. Most of their thoughts were kinda boring, but it was still really cool in my eyes.

“How come you can do all this stuff and I can’t?” I asked one day.

Cheney shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I can teach you?”

He tried to, he really did. I couldn’t talk to trees, I couldn’t hear their thoughts, and I couldn’t grow rainbow-colored flowers. And any time I tried to go inside a tree, I’d end up with a bruised nose. Back then, before my friends and I met Absinthe, I just couldn’t do what he did.

I love Cheney, but it always felt like he achieved the “successful big brother” quota really early on. He was smarter than me already; he was in an advanced program by our second week of middle school. Back then, I thought this wasn’t any different. I eventually just accepted that, once again, my brother was exceptional at something and I wasn’t.

It hadn't occurred to us that we were being watched.

The night we left our house, I was sitting in Dad’s office, watching him draw. I know it sounds boring, but that was my favorite pastime back then. When I wasn’t watching TV, playing video games, or running around in the woods, I’d be watching my Dad work. He was actually one of the many ways I learned how to draw - I’d watch him, and try to copy what he did in my own way.

“You’re drawings are awesome dad,” I told him.

He smiled without looking up from his work. “Thank you, honey.”

Cheney and I were both old enough at this point to know that he was more like Mom, and I was more like Dad. Mom and Cheney both hid their emotions most of the time, they were both quick-witted and they were ridiculously smart. Dad and I both wore our emotions on our sleeves, and we were both dedicated to what we were passionate about, whether it was an interest or our friends and family.

“You okay, kiddo?” Dad eventually asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You just seem more quiet than you usually are when I draw.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He put his pencil down. “Is something bothering you?”

I haven’t forgotten my promise to Cheney about keeping his abilities secret. I wasn’t about to break it. But it didn’t make me feel any less like dirt.

“Well, it’s just… Cheney can do something really cool, and I can’t…”

“Is this about school?”

“...Mmhmm.”

I didn’t feel comfortable lying to him, but I wanted to keep my promise. I told Cheney I wouldn’t say anything, and I hadn’t. I swear I hadn’t. It was just a little lie mixed in with the truth.

“It’s just…” I said, “Cheney is always better than me at everything. And whenever I try to do anything cool that he can do, it always blows back up in my face.”

That took Dad away from his work completely. There were three things in this world that would have distracted my Dad from drawing: my Mom, my Mom’s cooking, and his kids. If it was Mom’s birthday, or if Cheney and I were being bullied at school, or if Mom just finished a new lasagna recipe that needed taste-testing, Dad’s attention was gone from his desk right away.

“Well,” he said, “surely there must be something you’re good at.”

“I don’t know. I can’t really do anything cool.”

“Now I know for a _fact_ that isn’t true.”

“Yeah, it is. Compared to everyone else I know, I’m just… _me._ There’s nothing great about _me._ ”

Dad lifted my chin up and looked me square in the eye.

“Cyrille.” His voice was stern. “You know what we say about self-deprecation in this household.”

I did. I still remember it to this day.

I sighed. “It don’t do no good for nothin’.”

The real me, an English minor, might laugh at the way that’s worded. But it was a thing my family said to each other.

Dad nodded and put a hand on my shoulder. “Triple negative and all. We all have something we don’t like about ourselves, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything special about us. We’re all good at something.”

I smiled at him. “Like you’re good at drawing.”

“Well, it takes years of practice, honey. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing, too.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. I see you drawing all the time, and I’ve seen those doodles you make on your math homework. Your drawings are wonderful.”

I loved my parents, but I was definitely closer to my Dad than I was with my Mom. He always knew what to say to make me feel better. It didn’t matter what was bothering me. Mom, though… she meant well, but it felt like she never really knew what to do with me. Maybe it was because of the similarities between her and Cheney, but I always got the feeling that she liked him better.

Speaking of Mom, she entered the office at that moment. No knocking, no “hello honey, I’m home!” None of that.

“Hey, Mom,” I said to her. “How was work?”

Mom seemed a little off. It took a second for her to register I was there. “What? Oh. Hey, Cyrille. How was school, sweetheart?”

“Fine? You didn’t answer my question about work?”

“Work? It was - it was fine, honey.” She stopped talking to me and motioned my dad to come over. “Richard, come in the hall for a second, please.”

“Alright,” Dad replied. “Wait here for a second, okay, Cyrille?”

“Okay.”

With that, my parents went into the hall. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I definitely heard my dad say “Nicole.” I knew something was wrong now. Mom and Dad only addressed each other as “Mom” and “Dad.” They never said each others’ names unless something was up.

I got restless just sitting on the stool and waiting for them, so I got up and started toward the door to see if everything was okay. Before I could take two steps away from my stool, Dad came back in, making a beeline for one of the drawers in a nearby desk. He was digging around for something, but I couldn’t see what (I think it might have been a gun or a knife, looking back on it). Mom followed him, standing in the middle of the office and looking around frantically.

The whole thing was starting to freak me out. Mom’s nervousness, Dad’s sudden change in attitude, it was getting to be too much for me.

“Guys?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t go near the window, sweetie,” Dad warned me. His voice was sharp.

That didn’t help at all. I wasn’t anywhere near the window - it was on the other side of the room. I tried to catch a glance outside. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I remember wondering what the hell his deal was.

“Mom, Dad, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

That seemed to soften Mom up a bit. She walked to me and looked me in the eyes. I’ll never forget that look...

“Sweetie, go find your brother,” Mom urged. “Dad and I will be with you guys in a minute, okay?”

“Uh, okay,” I said, and I left the room, pretending I didn’t hear them hissing about something.

I walked around the house, calling out Cheney’s name. 

“Cheney?!” I called out. I got a little worried when he didn’t answer. “Cheney, where are you?!”

He finally came out of his room. He looked almost annoyed.

“What is it?” he asked. “I was in the middle of my science homework.”

I grabbed his hand and pulled him into my room. I made sure our parents were still downstairs and shut the door.

Cheney looked at me like I’d sprouted a third eye. “Uh… what’s going on?”

“Mom and Dad are saying we have to leave.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. I think they’re really freaked out about something.”

Cheney made a face, like he was thinking about something.

His eyes went wide. “Cyrille…” he said after a minute. “You didn’t-”

“No!” I retorted. I immediately knew what he was thinking. “I didn’t tell them! I swear!”

Cheney sighed. “Then what were they talking about?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear them, and they didn’t say anything.”

That was when Mom and Dad came into my room without knocking. I was about to chew them out for doing so, but then I saw their faces. They were both wide eyed and their mouths were slightly open with terror and urgency. I’d never seen their faces like that before.

“Kids,” Mom said, “pack as much as you can carry. We need to go. Tonight.”

This caught both of us off guard.

“What..?” My voice was barely a whisper. “But I thought we were done moving.”

Dad was trying to control himself, but I could hear a bit of shakiness in his voice. “Something’s come up at Mom’s work, guys. We’re… we’re not gonna be able to stay here anymore.”

“Wait…” Cheney muttered. “Mom, were you fired?”

“No,” she replied. “It just… it’s not a good place to be anymore.”

If I wasn’t scared before, I was now. We were just leaving? Out of nowhere?

“I don’t understand,” I told them. “What’s happening?”

Mom looked at us. She was clearly trying to keep herself composed for our sakes, but it didn't help me relax.

“Someone...” Mom said. “Someone came up to me at work today. Someone dangerous. They threatened me, and the rest of you. This person doesn’t like people like me. We can’t let them find us, okay?”

“What do you mean, ‘people like you?’” Cheney asked.

Mom looked me dead in the eyes when I asked her that. She looked sad heartbroken ashamed? I don’t know.

“I’m sorry, kids,” Mom told us. “I should have told you two…”

“Told us what?” I asked.

Mom walked over to a couple of potted plants next to the window. One of them was a little succulent that Dad gave her on their anniversary, the other was a pot with a few baby sprouts from the original plant. A few days prior, Mom had cut out a few pieces and placed some in a new pot to make a new plant. I think she called this “propagating.”

Mom put two of her fingers into the pot with the cuttings so they were touching the soil. Within seconds, the little green sprouts that were just barely poking out started spreading. They were getting bigger and bigger until we could clearly see them growing into healthy adult succulents.

I didn’t know what to think. Mom just made plants grow in seconds when it would have taken weeks.

“Woah…” I muttered.

“Cool…” Cheney said.

“Cheney, Cyrille…” Mom told us. “Your grandmother was a dryad. A wood nymph, specifically. Her abilities were passed down to me. And, apparently, mine were passed to one of you.”

“Wood nymphs?” I asked.

“Beings with the ability to manipulate plants and wood. Their existence dates back for centuries, and we aren’t the only ones. Over the years, though, their species became more scarce. It’s not quite to the point where they’ll disappear entirely, but you don’t see them everywhere. And if you do, they look so human that it’s pretty common for them to go unnoticed.”

Dad put a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “Nicole? Honey?”

Mom went silent for a moment. The entire room felt heavy.

Mom took a breath and finished. “Our family has managed to stay relatively hidden for years. It was assumed our family was just a rumor for the longest time, but recently… we were caught onto. I thought you would both turn out normal because of Dad being human. But I was wrong...”

Dad’s hand didn’t leave Mom’s shoulder as he looked at me and Cheney. “Have either of you noticed anything… strange about yourselves?” he asked us. “Maybe you were able to do something with plants that you weren’t able to do before?”

I shook my head. “No, not with me.”

I didn’t know if it even mattered, but I didn’t say anything about Cheney.

But he nodded.

“What have you noticed?” Mom asked.

He didn’t look our parents in the eyes when he spoke. “I can change the shape of wood. I’ve also been, like, growing flowers. And changing their colors. I can teleport with trees, and I can hear what the trees are thinking…”

Mom sighed. “Cheney…” She sounded pretty unhappy.

Cheney stared down at the floor. He looked horrible. This was the saddest I’d ever seen him. I couldn’t just let him take the fall by himself.

So, I did what any decent sibling would do.

“I was with him,” I told them. “He wasn’t doing that stuff, like, by himself. He was just showing them to me.”

Mom looked at me, and her tone instantly changed from disappointed to irate. “Cyrille, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I promised him I wouldn’t! We were worried that you might think-”

“It doesn’t matter what I think anymore! Someone saw you two together! Now you could both be in just as much trouble!”

Wasn’t that some shit? I confessed to _observing my brother_ doing something cool, and Mom still found a way to yell at me for it. Something told me that this was part of the reason why Mom was closer to Cheney than me. They both had this connection with trees and plants, and I didn’t. 

“Mom,” Cheney told her, “it wasn’t her fault! I asked her to keep it a secret because I didn’t want to scare you guys!”

Mom sighed. Something told me she still wasn’t happy about this whole thing.

Dad gave us another one of his reassuring smiles. “We’ll be okay, guys. But we need to leave tonight. We can make arrangements to find somewhere to stay for a while. Only pack what you absolutely need, okay?”

I realize how important it was for us to hurry, but part of me wasn’t completely focused on that. We finally had a home that we all really liked, and now we were being forced to leave out of the blue? Who even were these guys who were coming after us? Well, one thing was for sure: I was scared enough to do exactly what my parents said, and we all hurried to get ready to leave.

The rest of that night is a blur. I remember bits of it, like rushing to pack my clothes, toothbrush, sketchbook, colored pencils, a water bottle, and my old Wild Fox Pillow Pet (His name was Todd, after _The Fox and the Hound_. Yes, that’s important information, don’t fucking judge me). I’m pretty sure Cheney was crying because he couldn’t fit all his books in his backpack with his other stuff. Mom only got him to calm down by telling him we’d come back for the rest later, albeit she sounded a little annoyed. And then we were all rushing to get into the car, and we drove until we left the city.

We never came back for the rest of Cheney’s books. We never went back to the house. We never saw our neighborhood again. From that night, Ripley-Caron family was wiped off the map.


	5. The night we lost the car

We found out a few days after we left that our house was burned down. The news reported that the fire seemed spontaneous, and they couldn’t find a concrete cause. Nobody in our neighborhood saw us leave last night, but the fact that our car wasn’t in the driveway told them we weren’t involved in the fire. Our family was declared “Missing” the next day, after an anonymous source called it into our former local police department.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was behind all of this.

~~Fuck you, BAP.~~

We spent the first six months renting out an apartment somewhere in Oregon. I guess it doesn’t matter what city I say anymore, but I honestly can’t remember which one it was. We weren’t going to school anymore, but we were lucky enough to at least have a roof over our heads for a while. The apartment wasn’t terrible, but the place didn’t have any heating, and it was almost winter in Oregon. Eventually, our lease was up and we had to leave.

Cheney and I were always told that we couldn’t stay in the same place too long, or delve into a bank account. This was for one or both of two reasons:

  1. Your landlord will get suspicious if you pay rent with cash too many times.
  2. The guys looking for us might be able to track where we were based on where we took out money.



That’s part of the reason why we only rented the place for six months. It was also why we had to keep as much money on us as possible for as long as we could. And if we had to take money out of an ATM somewhere, we had to get right back into the car and book it as fast as we could, and not stop until we were two or three towns away from that ATM.

I still remember when we had to leave the car behind.

It was really late, maybe around 1 in the morning or so. We were driving down a boulevard to some other town - I can’t really remember where. My parents were still driving while me and Cheney were sleeping.

There were no other cars around. Just us.

I remember waking up around that time, and the first thing I saw was Cheney passed out in the seat next to me. I was about to go back to sleep when I heard my parents in one of their “discussions.”

I caught wind of Dad whispering something about, “can’t keep going like this. We need to think about the kids!”

“I _am_ thinking about the kids!” Mom hissed. “If those people ever did anything to them, I’d never be able to forgive myself…” She sounded like she was about to cry.

“But running away for the rest of our lives? We’re living like _fugitives,_ Nicole!”

“Anything is better than living in one of their labs!”

That made me wake up a little more. I tried to stretch myself out and crack my back. Let me tell you: sleeping in a car for a long time gets painful really fast.

“Fugitives..?” I muttered. “Labs?”

Dad sounded startled. “Oh! Hey, sweetie. We didn’t know you were up.”

Mom turned to face me, wearing a plastic smile that I grew to hate. “Try to go back to sleep, honey. Everything is okay.”

I was tired and grumpy and my neck hurt. And to add to that, they thought I was dumb enough that I didn’t know what they were talking about. If they thought I was just going to let that snippet go, they had somethin’ coming.

“What are you talking about?” I asked them. I made sure I was loud enough to wake Cheney up.

He yawned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on..? I was sleeping…”

“Mom and Dad are keeping secrets again.”

Dad looked at us in the rearview mirror. “Cyrille, we’re not keeping secrets from you.”

“Then why won’t you tell us what you’re talking about?”

I heard Dad sigh. I could just barely hear him muttering something like, “Nicole… they need to know…”

That made Mom sigh pretty heavily. “Okay… you’re right…” She turned to us. I could sort of make out a grim look on her face from the passing streetlights. “The people coming after us… They’re bad people.”

“What about these ‘bad people?’” Cheney asked, suddenly more awake. “Why are they bad? What do they want with us?”

Mom sighed. “A few years after my mother was born, these people found out about our species. You see, they wanted to study the connection between man and nature. These people would hunt down others like us and perform these… tests on them.”

“Tests?” I asked.

Mom continued. “It was named, ‘The Botanic Alchemy Project.’ It was an underground study, originally designed to find those who possess natural magic, study them, and utilize what they produce for things like solutions, solvents, antidotes for illnesses.... But their agenda changed as different scientists with different goals joined the team. The project changed from studies for cures to something worse. Their tests started involving things like mind control, destruction of large structures…”

Cheney blinked. “They were building an army…”

“Something like that,” Mom said. “They were taking these people, and turning them into weapons. If the subjects didn’t comply, they’d… the scientists would kill them.”

“That’s why we need to keep moving,” Dad said. “If they catch us again, we’ll all be in danger. They’ll take your mother and brother away, and they’ll likely kill you and me, Cyrille.”

“what…” I didn’t know what to say.

Mom sighed. “You’re both humans. Neither of you have powers. These people won’t see you as people who can help them. And if you can’t help them… you’re of no use to them…” Mom didn’t look us in the eyes anymore.

A million thoughts aand feelings were bouncing around in my head at once. I was afraid to die, and I was scared of what would happen to my Mom and brother. And I was angry. I was so mad that my parents both knew the real impact this could have on us, and chose not to tell us about any of it!

I’m mad even as I’m writing this. Did they seriously think they could keep this from us forever? That we’d just be driving down the highway for the rest of our lives, and never once ask why? There were dozens, maybe even hundreds of these bastards hunting my family down, and Mom didn’t even bother to tell us that our lives were in danger?!

So what did I do with this information, you ask?

I kicked Mom’s seat with both legs as hard as I could. Mom jerked forward and turned around.

“ _Cyrille!_ ” she barked. 

(Just assume every capitalized/italicized word is accompanied with a kick.)

“I don’t _CARE!_ ” I yelled. “How long did you know about this?! When were you gonna _TELL_ us?!”

Look, I’m aware that I was basically having a full-blown tantrum at that point, but I didn’t care.

 _“Cyrille!”_ Dad yelled. “You are 14 years old! You’re acting like a child!”

~~FOURTEEN WAS A FUCKING CHILD~~

“I don’t give a _FUCK!_ ” I kicked harder that time.

“ _Language_ , young lady!” Mom yelled.

“Are you _SERIOUS?!_ Out of _EVERYTHING_ you could _POSSIBLY_ be worried about, you’re _WORRIED_ about _FUCKING SWEARS?!_ ”

“What is your problem?!” Cheney yelled.

Looking back on it, I get why Cheney was so freaked out. It was early in the morning, and we both woke up to our parents telling us that we were probably all going to die. But I ignored him. I answered that like I was answering my parents instead of him. 

“ _NOBODY_ in this _FAMILY_ trusts us with _ANYTHING!_ Our parents just _LIE_ and _PRETEND_ that we never see _ANYTHING! THAT’S_ my problem! My _PROBLEM_ is that you _CAN’T! STOP! KEEPING! SECRETS!_ ’

I kicked the seat as hard as I could. So hard that my mom lurched forward a couple of times.

Mom whirled around and screamed, “That’s _enough_ out of-!”

Cheney pointed out the front window and cried, “Dad! Look out!”

I followed his hand, and it was only then that I noticed the black SUV speeding in front of us and coming to a stop. Dad swerved hard, but it wasn’t enough. Our hood scraped against one of the doors, and we lost control of the car. We flew off the road, barreling through the woods along the streets. Mom screamed and Dad tried to get a hold of the wheel. I grabbed hold of Cheney’s arm, and he held onto both me and one of his armrests.

The last thing I heard was a loud crash as the car hit something that might have been a tree.

I remember waking up to my Dad carrying me, and Mom carrying Cheney while they were running. Our parents looked a little bruised, but they could still move, which was good, given what was going on. I thought I could hear voices in the distance, but we were getting too far into the brush for them to catch us. I tried to move to look behind Dad, and I thought I could see flashlights pointing at us.

“Mom?! Dad?!” I cried out.

“It’s okay, sweetie!” Dad told me as he tried to keep his voice steady. He was bleeding from a small cut on his forehead, probably from the crash. “We’ll be okay!”

We came to a stop after we passed through a clearing. Mom reached out and screamed as an army of roots grew from the ground in the clearing. It all caused a loud cracking sound that pierced the air. I was surprised no one came outside at the noise. They were all so thick and close together that there was no way anyone would be able to get through them.

I just stared at the roots, then back at Mom. I couldn’t believe she did that. I thought she could just grow flowers at first, maybe do some of the same things Cheney did. This went so much deeper than I could have possibly thought.

My parents kept running until we got out of the woods, carrying us all the way. And just like that, we didn’t have a car anymore. I thought for months that it was my fault, but our parents would constantly tell me that it was the searchers’ fault - that they somehow tracked us down and cornered us. Still, I couldn’t help but always feel some kind of guilt about everything.


End file.
